Ed Driscoll, over at Pajamas Media, has a blog post on the Main Stream Media, "T’was Accountability That Killed The MSM."
Although, I think the death of the Main Stream Media may be overstated.
Regards — Cliff
PS: And Howard Kurtz, over at The Washington Post lays into Fox News commentator Glenn Beck, but then admits the MSM blew the story on Mr Anthony "Van" Jones.
These are the figures that catch my eye:
ReplyDelete"While 73 percent of Republicans say the media are fair to the Obama administration, just 25 percent said that about the Bush administration's coverage four years ago. For Democrats, 68 percent approved of the Bush coverage in 2005, while 54 percent say the press is fair to Obama... Among Democrats, 81 percent have a positive view of network news, 75 percent for CNN, 60 percent for MSNBC and 43 percent for Fox News. Among Republicans, 72 percent have a favorable view of Fox, 55 percent for network news, 44 percent for CNN and 34 percent for MSNBC."
It's pretty clear that party-affiliated Americans are no longer employing "news" outlets to learn things--they're just using them to confirm their biases, and that's both terrifying, especially for anyone who sits in the middle and can recognize both brands of insanity for what they are, and terribly sad.
Also, does anyone know exactly how we're defining "MSM?" It seems funny to be me when news outlets or talk show hosts boast about their ratings from one side of their mouth, and then refer to the "MSM" as if it's obviously someone else, without a trace of irony or self-consciousness?
ReplyDeleteAnyone else see the humor in that?
Going top to bottom, I would say the MSM is the daily press and the weekly news magazines and the three major networks and their spinoffs, plus CNN. I would add Fox, but the others might be offended. I would not include The Valley Patriot.
ReplyDeleteAs for Kad's Komment, the idea of the press taking sides goes back to our very beginnings, when there were a lot more newspapers, but fewer radio and TV stations.
Responsible journalism, as we understand it today didn't come along for a while—and not being a student of journalism I don't know when the switch came, but I am betting after the Spanish American war.
With the Internet coming along we may be going back to that partisan press.
The interesting and fun question is, what does the alternative look like? What would US politics look like without parties? Not in terms of less partisan sniping, but in terms of organizing and collecting money. What would competition look like? Would it be unpatriotic to oppose the incumbent? We need to see a manifesto from the "no more parties" party, so to speak.
Regards — Cliff
Why not just admit bias?
ReplyDeleteI get most of my world/national news 'filtered' through various pro-life/catholic agencies, now a days.